


It's Magic! (A Gift Remix)

by Gerec



Series: Remixes [7]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Space, Humor, Implied Erik/Raven, M/M, Mages in Space!, Though it's not actually happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-19 02:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/pseuds/Gerec
Summary: The Oracle agrees to help Erik locate Shaw, if Erik agrees to return to him after the mission.And now that the deed is done, it's time to keep his promise.





	It's Magic! (A Gift Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dedkake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedkake/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Gift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028334) by [dedkake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedkake/pseuds/dedkake). 



“Captain,” Darwin relays over the ship’s intercom, “we’re coming out of hyperspace in a couple of minutes. Should have a visual for you momentarily.”

“Thanks. I’m on my way.”

He turns from the view screen and rubs his eyes, exhausted after hours of scanning the Holonet news reports. It’s been three days and he’s found nothing about the _Magnus_ or her crew, or anything even remotely hinting at a connection between Erik and the incident on Ditale-5.

Good.

The lump on the bed moves, and a twinge of regret settles unexpectedly in Erik’s gut. He’s enjoyed having his guest around these past weeks and months, and is willing to acknowledge – though only to himself – that he’s disappointed at the thought of her imminent departure. Though he’d always known that Mystique’s presence on the ship was temporary, Erik still held out hope that she would stay on board after the mission, and maybe even agree to officially sign on with their rag tag band of pirates and mercenaries.

It feels like ages now since he first set foot on that icy, derelict planet, seeking information on the whereabouts of one Sebastian Shaw. Erik had spent the last few years – countless hours and precious resources – in pursuit of his old teacher across the galaxy, single minded in his quest for revenge. But the bastard had proved frustratingly elusive, always a step ahead as though he could read Erik’s mind; more than once he’d found himself missing Shaw by just a few days - and sometimes, improbably, by a mere few hours.

With whispers of dark magic and a powerful portal mage at his side, Shaw travelled planet by planet and system by system, swaying other magic users to join his holy war. The Coalition sent forces after him too – battalions of human knights outfitted with cybernetics, side by side with Kartoosian mystics and Malakar hunters – intent on reining him in before he destabilized the nearest star systems. It seemed impossible, the way Shaw continued to successfully evade capture, and increasingly futile for Erik…that is until one day, they’d stumbled out of hyperspace and discovered – quite by accident – the location of the famed Oracle X.

“Hey, wake up,” Erik says with a light nudge, grinning when Mystique opens her eyes and squints up at him, before pulling the covers over her head with a groan. “Come on, you have to get up! We’ll be landing soon and I have to get to the bridge.”

“So go. I’ll just stay here.”

“I thought you’d be more excited. You were the one who insisted we get you home as soon as possible.”

“And _I_ thought you wanted me to _stay_ , my friend, so we could _really_ get to know each other.”

Erik shakes his head, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes when Mystique promptly kicks the covers off and leaps gracefully out of bed. He’s finds himself suddenly with an armful of very blue, very _enticing_ flesh, and wide, amber eyes staring up at him, full of mischief.

He sighs.

“Stop trying to seduce me.” It’s driving him a little mad, the constant flirting and blatant innuendo; if he hadn’t promised the Oracle he wouldn’t lay so much as a hand on her…

Mystique tilts her head slightly, and smiles. “Oh darling, I won’t tell.”

Erik snorts, pulling away and waving his hand towards the door. “He knows everything, that’s why he’s the _Oracle_ , remember? And I won’t repay him by going back on my promise.”

With a sigh – much more dramatic and put-upon than Erik’s own – she runs a hand through her hair and chuckles. “If you insist. I’m sure the Oracle will be very pleased that you turned out to be such an honorable human.” She arches an eyebrow at Erik then and says, “Well? Shall we make our way to the bridge?”

She doesn’t wait for his response, brushing by with a flourish past the sliding door, leading Erik like a guest through the halls of his own ship. It had annoyed him in the worst way when they first met, the aura of charming arrogance that permeated all of Mystique’s actions and words. Their dealings in the beginning were fraught with sly digs (on her part) and barely concealed mistrust (on his), though things did slowly begin to change during their hunt for Shaw, morphing from wary co-existence to mutual understanding…

And now, perhaps to a little something _more_.

They arrive on the bridge a few moments later, to see the crew all crowded around Darwin and staring at the giant view screen. There’s a buzz in the air that Erik doesn’t understand, that is until he looks up and sees the clear outline of the planet in the near distance, looking nothing at _all_ like the Cerebro he remembers from their last visit.

“What…what is _that_?” Erik asks, ignoring the muttering between his pilot and Summers, his navigator slash gear head. “Did we come out of hyperspace at the wrong coordinates?”

Alex shakes his head, shooting Erik an annoyed look before turning his attention back to his data screen, fingers flying across the navigation panel. “No! We triple checked the coordinates before we left Ditale-5. And I’ve checked it again, like ten times since we got here! This is definitely Cerebro…or where Cerebro is supposed to be?”

“It’s like the entire composition of the planet has changed,” McCoy says, voice quiet in breathless wonder. “The Cerebro we charted was nothing but a giant hunk of rock and ice and now there’s vegetation and water covering almost sixty percent of the--.”

Erik interrupts him with an impatient huff. “We’re talking about the whole planet. How could things have changed on such a massive scale in the three months we’ve been away?”

“Hey geniuses,” Angel snarks, “how ‘bout you ask the local? Maybe she can tell us what the hell is going on, seeing as how she _lives_ there.”

He turns to find Mystique lounging in the Captain’s chair, her feet propped up on the console. She just grins at him, ignoring his glare, but acquiesces when McCoy gives her a pleading look.

“Haven’t you guessed? It’s magic.”

Erik splutters. “Magic? How? The amount of power needed to fuel this kind of spell would be tremendous…impossible.”

“The wonder of magic is in its infinite variety,” Mystique shares with a careless shrug. “There are many things you don’t know, and have never seen. When Shaw took the Oracle’s heart, he took much of his power. Now as the heart returns to its proper owner, his magic, and all that it touches is restored.”

Darwin whistles. “That Oracle, he is one bad ass son of a bitch.”

“Good thing he’s on _our_ side then,” Alex adds, “and also, that the Captain managed to keep it in his pants around Mystique. So we’re not going to get magic’ed into oblivion by one pissed off Oracle.”

“Yeah, thanks boss,” Angel says with a smirk.

“All of you, shut up.”

\---

The Oracle’s ‘home’ is no longer an ancient rock fortress of snow and ice, a cavern dug into the side of a lone mountain atop a field of endless white. It glitters now like a jewel perched amongst a sea of living green, a shining beacon of crystal and steel, incongruous against the abundance of flora and fauna – and completely alien to anything Erik has ever seen.

They leave the ship and the crew to wait, entering the Oracle’s sanctuary on foot. As always Mystique leads and Erik follows, tracing her confident steps through the serpentine corridors that in no way resembles the layout from their visit months before. But soon enough they find themselves back in the large central chamber, a vast, airy dome of jagged rock now humming with the smooth sheen of some unknown metal.

“Home sweet home,” Mystique murmurs with a quirk of her lips, looking fondly at the body seated in the only chair. Before, the entire thing had been encased in a layer of ice, and the Oracle was an ancient, bald man in tattered robes, slumped forward with a gaping hole in his chest. He had appeared unconscious, or perhaps simply unable to speak; the ‘conversation’ he’d had with the Oracle had been relayed entirely through Mystique – both his request for help locating Shaw, and the price to be paid after the mission’s success. But now in his place is a young man in his prime, seated upright in the chair, the throbbing wound in his chest nothing more than a small, circular cavity.

Mystique steps up to the dais and gently brushes the Oracle’s hair, before pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. She reaches into her pack and pulls out the sealed box, and removes the glowing, pulsing white gem with a smile.

“Catch me,” she orders, and then promptly shoves the ‘heart’ back inside the Oracle’s chest.

“What—“ Erik asks, though he doesn’t finish his question, on account of Mystique falling backwards into his arms, fainting dead away like a switch being flipped on a machine. He gently eases her off the steps and onto the ground, checking her pulse and pushing down the rising panic in his own chest.

“Mystique! Mystique? Hey, hey, hang on alright? I’m going to call McCoy, just hang in there—“

“She’ll be fine,” a voice interjects, warm and affectionate, coming from the Oracle – and his _moving_ body – on the chair. “The transfer is draining, more so for my sister than for me unfortunately. But I promise she’ll be awake in a few moments, and in perfect health.”

When Erik looks up he finds the Oracle standing over him, a vision of lean muscle and smooth flesh, with sky blue eyes, soft brown hair and the plushest set of red lips. He’s also completely naked, his very beautiful, very nude penis right at Erik’s eye level.

“You’re—“

_The Oracle_

_Nothing like the last time I saw you_

_Fucking gorgeous_

Are some of the things he means to say, only what actually comes out of his mouth is “—naked. You’re naked. Why?”

The Oracle tilts his head to look at him, exactly like Mystique, and answers, “I look like this because of you, Erik.”

“What?”

“I mean, that this form, and the one you knew before are both manifestations of my power and state of being, yes. But I look this way _specifically_ because this is how you want me to look.”

Erik shakes his head. “I want you to be naked?”

The Oracle smirks. “Apparently.”

“Ugh, stop flirting Charles. You’re giving me a headache,” Mystique says, still cradled in Erik’s arms. He sighs with relief, and quickly helps her sit upright as the Oracle crouches down and takes her hand. “Didn’t you do enough of that these past three months?”

“You’ll be pleased to know, Raven, that he was the perfect gentleman as promised. No amount of charm on my part could crack his iron resolve.”

“Nice to know you didn’t have sex with him in my body. Did you kill that bastard Shaw? I hope you made it hurt.”

“Darling, I tore my heart out of his chest with your bare hands.”

“Good.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Erik barks, his head spinning, trying to keep up with the picture that’s slowing coalescing around him. “The Oracle…you were in Mystique’s body all along? You were the one who led us to Shaw?”

Mystique rolls her eyes and glares at them both, springing to her feet. “You didn’t tell him? Of course you didn’t tell him. Charles, what were you thinking?”

‘Charles’ just shrugs – another of Mystique’s familiar gestures that Erik now realizes as belonging to the Oracle – and says, “it seemed safer not to let anyone know. I couldn’t risk Shaw finding out. If he even had the slightest hint it was me in another body, I wouldn’t have been able to get close enough to kill him.”

“You could have just told _Lehnsherr_ —”

“Raven, I had my reasons—”

“So what now?” Erik snaps, effectively cutting off any more of the Oracle’s explanations. He’s angry at being deceived, even if he can understand the rationale, and feels more than a little foolish. He’s gone and fallen hard for some all-powerful being capable of planet altering magic; it’s clear now that ‘Mystique’s’ incessant teasing was nothing more than idle amusement for the Oracle to pass the time.

“Oh darling, that’s not true at all,” ‘Charles’ says, appearing suddenly in a bio-suit, like the one Erik is wearing along with the rest of the _Magnus_ ’ crew. “I’ve grown terribly fond of you too. Which is why I’m glad you kept your promise and came back.”

_I’ll make it up to you, Erik. We’ll have all the time in the world to get properly acquainted._

There’s a lot Erik wants to ask, about how Shaw came into possession of the Oracle’s – or rather _Charles’_ – heart in the first place, whether the _Magnus_ stumbling across the secret location of Cerebro was fate or machination, and what exactly is the extent of Charles’ almost god-like powers…

Just who, or what is he?

Charles smiles at him, and wraps his arm around Mystique. “There is no name that you know for what I am.”

Erik stares at him. “What the hell does _that_ mean?”

“What Charles is trying to say, is that we’re not from around here,” Mystique adds. “We’re travelers. From another galaxy.”

“Another gal--how?”

“Magic,” Charles answers, at the same time that Mystique says, “On a ship.”

Erik rolls his eyes. “So a magical ship.”

Charles laughs, and he doesn’t want to admit that he might like this voice even more than the one that kept him company the past few months. “Yes, that. If you’re ready, we can go now.”

“Go? Go where?” Erik asks.

“You made a promise to me, that after I help you find Shaw and kill him, you would return here and let me introduce you to the others,” Charles replies, reaching forward to take Erik by the hand. “And here you are. So it’s time to go.”

“My crew—”

“Will come with us of course,” Mystique answers, “we promise, they’ll be perfectly safe.”

Erik sighs. The others know about his deal of course, and he knows them well enough to know that they’d never willingly stay behind, no matter the risk. “Fine, should I go get them? Bring them to your ship?”

“No need, darling.” Charles grins at him as the ground – no, the entire damned fortress – begins to rumble, and one entire wall slides into the floor, revealing a giant console reminiscent of the one on the bridge of the _Magnus_. A floor-to-ceiling holographic map is the next to appear in their midst, and Erik finds himself standing dumbstruck in a swirling sea of planets and stars. “We’re all set.”

And his jaw practically hits the floor when the whole _‘planet’_ begins to move, apparently on its way to an entirely different galaxy.


End file.
